The effect of temperature on emissions of carboxylic acids in passive climate controlled repositories with cultural heritage collections: (Paper 348)

This study investigates the effect of reducing temperature on the emission of carboxylic acids and other volatile organic compounds (VOCs) released from museum objects. Volatile car-boxylic acids cause deterioration of cultural heritage collections, e.g. tarnishing of metals, salt efflorescence on calcareous structures, and acid hydrolysis of organic materials. The concen-trations of VOCs and carboxylic acids in air were determined in a test chamber set-up. Active sampling of VOCs was performed on Tenax TA® with subsequent thermal desorption and coupled gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (TDS-GC/MS) analysis. Carboxylic acids were trapped on silica gel tubes and analyzed by ion chromatography (IC). The results show that reducing the temperature from 23°C to 10°C will reduce the emission of carboxylic acids from selected cultural heritage materials to 27-68%.It has to be clarified if reducing tempera-ture can have a beneficial effect on air filtration requirements in repositories with passive cli-mate control in Northern Europe.